Kony support could be better spent

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May 8, 2012 • All Staff Editorial
Filed under Opinion

March 5th, 2012 a video was released on the internet exposing the truth about the actions in Uganda, Africa. The main target was Joseph Kony, a man known for abducting kids from their homes, having them kill their families and making them be apart of his infamous army the Invisible Children. Jason Russell, the director of the film, discusses and shows explicit footage persuading our country to act against this terrorizing man. After 86 million views on the video, by March 30, the campaign “Kony 2012” had began to make itself mainstream. People started protesting and the filmmakers eventually made merchandise to sell to donate to the cause. It’s great that our country is willing to start this movement in order to capture Kony, but should we really be focusing on another country’s problem before our own?

That’s an issue with the U.S. we are seen as this nation that will no matter what help and raise money on any other country that has a disaster, but tend to not see the problems that America is facing. With our education system falling, healthcare insurance raising, our debt that needs to be paid off and just in general our economy getting inadequate, the money that we work so hard for in fundraising is being wasted on a person who hasn’t even been active in Uganda since 2006 and still hasn’t been caught. Many people that had the heart to make their donations by purchasing posters, bracelets, lanyards and more were easily fooled into thinking they were making a difference when only 32% of the profit went to the efforts of stopping Kony.

Is spending loads of money on this organization really more important than the issues we face here in America? There are reasons why the government does not want to get involved and that’s because they do not want to interfere and make this situation worse then what it was 6 years ago. We all agree that Joseph Kony is an evil human being, and yes he should be stopped somehow/someway, that’s Uganda’s responsibility though, this shouldn’t be at the top of our list.

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